WordLayers

Fourteen years ago I was in the middle of a life changing decision; a conundrum of unmovable edge. I had to step back to step forward which moved me into an unknown place: an art store where I had never been, as me. I stepped inside and moved to the sketchbooks. After opening and closing and sensing, I found a large black one with wire binding. The paper was heavy and empty--like my heart. How to fill these pages? I followed several creative aisles over to the only medium that made sense. The colored markers. Hundreds of pens and hundreds of colors. I began to touch, to test and to turn a kiosk filled with innumerable possibilities.
After an embarrassing amount of time, I had a handful and paid  and headed for the kitchen table at home. This decision, what was it? What was I looking for? I wrote. And, the writing was not difficult, nor did it last long, nor did it fill the page. I returned the following day and wrote more in a different color and the next day I wrote on the same page in a new color. Within this time of writing in layers, several days and pages and weeks passed. Then, one day, I was done. Just done. The next Monday to follow this day, I resigned from my job. I knew where I wanted to be, and what I wanted to do. I did find a job, and I did move a long distance -- to a city near the city where I wanted to be. The colors continued to fill pages of writing text on text. All these pages eventually became my art and I had some printed into posters and framed the ones that fit especially well into where I was.  Within two years of settling, my then current job ended against my will. Unemployment stepped across the threshold. Never did the writing stop and a new layer turned the pages into poetry. Poems played on lines and into colors. From the moment of recognition, no matter how life happened, creativity stood as solace and guide. The span of no job phenomenally was the bridge to exactly where I wanted to be three years before, exactly. Many years ago I stepped into an art store in a city far away and dreamed my life whole. And now, that perfect job dreamt has turned cranky, noisy and un-fun. I recognize the taste of it and know "here I go, again." I look forward to "this," as if hanging onto every word. 

Wonderworks

Tao One, as translated by John Bright-Fey, refers to word without word as "Wonderworks" and this caused me to think of WordLayers and how it began and why. It came out of a dream to change my life from uncomfortable to joyous. I wrote words of the dream. I actualized Tao One by changing word to non-word and the result was exactly what I wanted as I watched it happen. I participated in the happening but it happened first -- this writing into non-word, this obtaining dream out of the colors of words. Imagine that. It happened and I lived it. I walked the path of the dreamer and lived exactly there, in back-word writing, until it was time to move on and I finally absorbed Wonderworks. Just absorbed it -- and all of me was me. I now write WordLayers as an art and take the prints to have them  beautifully matted and framed and each piece becomes its own within itself and all now hang on the walls of my home. And, in every room I walk through magic. This is what the Wordlayers.com site is all about and this just dawned on me today. I think there is really no time, we just live in this life and all is all at the same time. As Tao One reminds me, "one miracle talks to another in a language that you can feel but not understand."

Putting a title to it

Colors Leapt

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." -- Agnes De Mille

This little piece of art scrabbled out of me during a period of recovery from a fall down the stairs. My brain and bones were broken. I had to make art and started scratching out color bars with my marking pens -- the colors came by themselves, waiting in line, patiently. I look at them now and wonder why these colors? I think the stripes fall in front of words before the words start talking about that which inspires. I found this particular piece when I turned my mind to other matters.

Art happens and then we put a title to it. This morning I am working on labels for the art show that begins June 1st and without my direction this print is in the pile of  "must take." It wears the appropriate title, Colors Leapt.

Unsafe places

What have I done here? Selected reds and yellows and copied one poem or essay or journal entry over and over in repetitive WordLayers style. But instead of paper I used a 12" x 12" square of burlap canvas. The result was flat and uninteresting. So I scanned that square and dumped it into Photoshop wherein I cut it into pieces and strips, pieces and strips over and under and sometimes around. Sometimes translucent and sometimes just dull and then bold. There are spaces where the naked canvas shows through and that seemed too raw for me but I left it because it is true to the fabric. It is here that I discovered the integrity of the medium--pen, ink, fabric. The only fuss is the confusion of place--where one piece meets another and you know by feel whether belonging occurs. Yet I went to places that felt unsafe anyway and stayed awhile.

Marks that resonate

"Get to know the marks that resonate with you. You are now free to look at the page as you draw." (Jill Bliss)

Last night my head went crazy. Words and spirals and red flowers. Gold writing on dark blue rectangles. Yellow splotches.

Winter houses at 4:00pm

Art does not come from a place of definition. Since the accident, concussion seems to have borrowed my words of poetry. WordLayers remains verbally quiet. Today, I read in Bright-Fey's translation of Tao 62, "magic words will not gain you entrance." For me, "entrance" would be sound thinking and good writing. But it now seems that "magic words" have flown away and sit like birds on a wire looking down with tilted heads as I play with colors as bright as winter sun when we drive west at 4:00pm. I see this new art in "radical amazement" and to share it seems irresistible. I have never made Winter Solstice cards, but this year this art goes out the door as cards honoring the movement from dark to light for all.

GarageArt

GARAGE ART: Since the accident, a varied form of art has shadowed what I have done before. I don't quite know what to do with this, but I think I'll play with it for awhile. I think art and words change anyway, even without accidents or the coming of old age.

ART THERAPY: I am enormously grateful for the coming back of something new. Since the accident, I've had to teach myself how to use the same web design tools one day at a time over and over again. I've been dragging around pieces of color not knowing where the color came from or where the pieces will go. And it looks happy. . .not at all as dark as I feel about relearning the beginnings.

First Color

Like a stream I fell into a low place

FIRST COLOR I fell down a flight of stairs and knocked myself pretty crazy. I lost both words and art. This is the first of the art combined with a few words that seem to go with the chapter of the Tao I am studying while I wait for what I call sanity to return.

When a country obtains great
power,it becomes like the sea:

all streams run downward onto it.
http://taoway.blogspot.com

Since the accident I have had no zip for writing or art. I've been busy with the after effects of trauma. Family love and care, doctors and therapists have brought me to a place of return and recognition. I saw an add for Color Reform ABC carpets in the NYT's Magazine. It was art I wanted to look at and study simply because of the pleasure it gave me. I cut the page out and placed it by my favorite coffee mug and pot of pens. Today, I'm going up the stairs I fell down. My studio is there waiting to be cleaned and arranged and opened for whatever comes next. Creativity has shown itself as a strength that cannot be shook, rattled or rolled out of my body, mind or spirit. Good day, today.